spised and contemned for being ugly and humble and serviceable and
meek. You will be one of those who will be thought to have no spirit to
rise, no power of making men serve your turn. You will miss what are
called your chances, you will be a failure; but you will be trusted and
loved by children and simple people; they will depend upon you, and you
will make the atmosphere in which you live one of peace and joy. You
will have selfish employers, tyrannical masters, thankless children
perhaps, for whom you will slave lovingly. They will slight you and even
despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and
yours will be the face that they will remember when they come to die, as
that of the one person who loved them truly and unquestioningly. That
will be your destiny; one of utter obscurity and nothingness upon earth.
Yet each time, when you return hither, your work will be higher and
holier, and nearer to the heart of God. And now I have said enough; for
you have seen God, as I too saw Him long ago; and our hope is
henceforward the same."

"Yes," I said to Amroth, "I am content. I had thought that I should be
exalted and elated by my privileges; but I have no thought or dream of
that. I only desire to go where I am sent, to do what is desired of me.
I have laid my burden down."

XXXIV

Presently Amroth rose, and said that we must be going onward.

"And now," he said, "I have a further thing to tell you, and that is
that I have very soon to leave you. To bring you hither was the last of
my appointed tasks, and my work is now done. It is strange to remember
how I bore you in my arms out of life, like a little sleeping child, and
how much we have been together."

"Do not leave me now," I said to Amroth. "There seems so much that I
have to ask you. And if your work with me is done, where are you now
going?"

"Where am I going, brother?" said Amroth. "Back to life again, and
immediately. And there is one thing more that is permitted, and that is
that you should be with me to the last. Strange that I should have
attended you here, to the very crown and sum of life, and that you
should now attend me where I am going! But so it is."

"And what do you feel about it?" I said.

"Oh," said Amroth, "I do not like it, of course. To be so free and
active here, and to be bound again in the body, in the close, suffering,
ill-savoured house of life! But I have much to gain by it. I have a
sharpness of t